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Why did that approach change?

Surely the modern equivalent to that is having public git repositories.

Perhaps, but has "I'm not doing your whiteboard challenge - check out my git repositories instead!" ever worked for you?!

Haha, for some reason when phrased like that I get a bad feeling about the outcome of the interview.

I’m not sure if that strategy still works in today’s job market. It might still be, but I’m not the one to answer since I haven’t been on a job interview in quite some time.

I work in embedded systems. I always carry a few (small) projects with me in a backpack with a power supply and bring them out if certain topics allow me to do a show-and-tell.

I also carry a binder. Each page is a one-page description of a project with a color photo of the system and a bulled-point list of all technologies inside. It's a great conversation starter. Hasn't failed me yet.

10 years after I was hired, one of the interviewers still remembered me showing him a small board that I'd designed, even though he was a Windows MFC programmer and didn't know the first thing about microcontrollers.

I've made great hires who had binders just like you described.

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